Mona Lisa 'had eyebrows'
The Mona Lisa originally had eyebrows, according to a French art expert who has analysed Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece with a special camera.
Pascal Cotte said da Vinci built the painting up in layers, the last being a special glaze whose optical properties increased the illusion of a three-dimensional face. Above the glaze Da Vinci painted details such as the eyebrows.
He has uncovered a host of secrets about the Mona Lisa using a 240 megapixel camera. It can measure light so sensitively as to see through the top paint surface and uncover the layers below.
Cotte's work is explained in an exhibition, The Secrets of the Mona Lisa, that opens at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester on Saturday.
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
Pascal Cotte said da Vinci built the painting up in layers, the last being a special glaze whose optical properties increased the illusion of a three-dimensional face. Above the glaze Da Vinci painted details such as the eyebrows.
He has uncovered a host of secrets about the Mona Lisa using a 240 megapixel camera. It can measure light so sensitively as to see through the top paint surface and uncover the layers below.
Cotte's work is explained in an exhibition, The Secrets of the Mona Lisa, that opens at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester on Saturday.